My god this was a good episode. It had everything. Intrigue. Maybourne mysteriously doing shit in the Soviet Union. A whole new development that pleases me greatly, prying the stargate from the USA's grasp. And as the supporting storyline a bit of classic sci fi. Even Troi's nuclear wessels couldn't put me off in the end.

Hey, is there Troi/Carter fic out there from this ep? Because when the sub glass cracked and death was seemingly imminent it was Troi that Carter huddled near, not Daniel. Just sayin'.

Really this is just a fabulous show, it has everything. Bucket loads of humor, character development, regular shifts of tone.. it is peppier than Star Trek. Much, much peppier.

Also, you can run down to an Army surprlus or hunting store, buy a BDU field jacket, pants, and some boots, order a Stargate SGC mission patch online, and you have an authentic Stargate uniform! You can even wear it into Waffle House and nobody will stare at you. Way, way easier than Star Trek, B5, or Star Wars.

You probably haven't noticed this, but a lot of Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and North Africa (especially Mali) are huge, HUGE Stargate fans, dressing up in Abydos and Chulak costumes even for missions!

The First Ones: So Daniel is offered freshly roasted Goa'uld snake and he refuses. Is this because it is icky or because it is sentient?

Also in this episode I started getting fond of that dweeby scientist Rothman. He was kind of sweet, he knew he wasn't very good with people but his heart was in the right place. He was rather cute too and when he took off his glasses he was lovely.

Also in this episode I started getting fond of that dweeby scientist Rothman. He was kind of sweet, he knew he wasn't very good with people but his heart was in the right place. He was rather cute too and when he took off his glasses he was lovely.

You know what happened next.

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That's one thing that really annoyed me about this show (and the franchise in general). The writers were way too trigger happy sometimes.

That is so cool. I wonder if they would let me take a photo of them, before they detonated themselves of course, for my blog.

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I'm sure they would!

It could be one of the funniest, most epic photos in all of fandom.

Maybe you could get some bored staffer in a US embassy in northern Africa to build a paper-mache stargate, set it up in the desert somewhere, and then leak word to the local Al Qaeda affiliates that it's an antenna for a CIA listening post - and that they have to push it over and bury it, taking pictures and video to verify that it's been properly disabled, but not destroyed, and to post the videos on one of their websites as proof to the world that they're nobody's fools.

You could write a book about it. "How I Convinced Al Qaeda to Bury Their Stargate and Leave Us the F*** Alone."

And RIP Robert Rothman, who delivered one of my favorite lines in "Crystal Skull".

"I really wish it were a teleportation device, I really do, <snip> But what we have here. is. a. paperweight."

Also of side interest, considering election day: In the battleground state of Colorado, polling data from Colorado Springs is hard to explain - unless you realize how many freakin' aliens have been secretly settled there over the years.

Scorched Earth: That was pleasant, if a typical episodic piece of sci fi problem solving. It seemed at the end though that O'Neill really regretted not getting to blow that massive ship up.

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Unasked: Is it really okay to exterminate all the life on an entire planet just because none of it is technological or as intelligent as humans? All the squirrels, deer, rabbits, eagles, whales, dolphins, cats, dogs, monkeys, koala bears, chetahs, elephants, spotted owls, talking geckos, honey badgers, songbirds, horses, whooping cranes, bats, tree sloths, parrots, hippos, sea otters, polar bears, and jellyfish- on an entire planet - go extinct, and everybody is okay with that?

That is so cool. I wonder if they would let me take a photo of them, before they detonated themselves of course, for my blog.

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I'm sure they would!

It could be one of the funniest, most epic photos in all of fandom.

Maybe you could get some bored staffer in a US embassy in northern Africa to build a paper-mache stargate, set it up in the desert somewhere, and then leak word to the local Al Qaeda affiliates that it's an antenna for a CIA listening post - and that they have to push it over and bury it, taking pictures and video to verify that it's been properly disabled, but not destroyed, and to post the videos on one of their websites as proof to the world that they're nobody's fools.

You could write a book about it. "How I Convinced Al Qaeda to Bury Their Stargate and Leave Us the F*** Alone."

Scorched Earth: That was pleasant, if a typical episodic piece of sci fi problem solving. It seemed at the end though that O'Neill really regretted not getting to blow that massive ship up.

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Unasked: Is it really okay to exterminate all the life on an entire planet just because none of it is technological or as intelligent as humans? All the squirrels, deer, rabbits, eagles, whales, dolphins, cats, dogs, monkeys, koala bears, chetahs, elephants, spotted owls, talking geckos, honey badgers, songbirds, horses, whooping cranes, bats, tree sloths, parrots, hippos, sea otters, polar bears, and jellyfish- on an entire planet - go extinct, and everybody is okay with that?

Jack should've blown up the ship.

It may not have seemed like it, but his was the moral choice.

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Yeah it's interesting that didn't get asked. I think it has to do with the desperate times so many peoples they interact with find themselves in. It's almost like it's a luxury to make hard decisions for animals when you can barely manage to pull them off for people most of the time.

Any kind of terraforming done will push out or exterminate animals that have adapted to an environment the terraformers have deemed inhospitable to their purposes.

Well, we can hope the ship's journey is a long one, the robot gets disabled, and the people quickly discover that the ship has freezers full of tasty meat, some kind of weird looking alien lizard things that go good with mustard. Then they arrive at their home world, the ship lands automatically, and they cut it up for the scrap market.

I think the writers were just a bit lazy on this one, because having a non-living interface getting adopted doesn't really balance the scales of a planetary mass-extinction to resurrect a species that's already gone, and whose members obviously had no problem wiping out all life on another planet or they'd have programmed "already has multi-cellular life" as a rejection criterion for their ship's AI.

Another way the story could've gone is to have SG-1 save all the extinct aliens, ressurect them, and find out that they're the Aliens - from Alien. Although several stories pretty close to that do occur in the series.

Beneath the Surface: A well paced episode with the same plot as VOY's Workforce. Quite visually interesting. Amusing to see O'Neill following Carter around like a puppy when he didn't remember who he was, lots of sweetness there. Kind of half assed ending, how many workers are there? A lot more than what we see I assume, and they are going to do what, piff them through a stargate onto a beach? To do what? But never mind that, getting there was enjoyable and of course we get this great quote from O'Neill when he's trying to remember his old life.

O'Neill: I remember something. There's a man ... he's bald and wears a short sleeved shirt ... and somehow he's very important to me. I think his name is ... Homer.

Point of No Return: I always enjoy these stories with the UFO nerds being really onto something. Also pleased this one didn't die, as I recall there was an X-Files with some decent UFO nerds who died, or maybe that was in Sanctuary. Noooo don't kill the nerds!!

Point of No Return: I always enjoy these stories with the UFO nerds being really onto something. Also pleased this one didn't die, as I recall there was an X-Files with some decent UFO nerds who died, or maybe that was in Sanctuary. Noooo don't kill the nerds!!

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That episode spawned an interesting spin-off pilot on the WB which sadly didn't get picked up, which is frustrating because they'll air all sorts of cr*p.